Memories of a WWII Hero: Captain Brown's Story (World War 2 Documentary) | Timeline

[Music] to achieve supersonic flight was the holy grail of aeration in my time [Music] here you had a new airplane more power more thrust more aerodynamic refinement I got down to 4,000 feet suddenly aircraft went into a violent oscillation [Music] I was begin to lose consciousness one thought was survival how do I get this sorted out what I did was hold the throttle hold the stick just hold books back gently together [Music] [Applause] my name is Captain Eric Braun my last job was chief naval test pilot to the flagellum [Music] you my first actual flight was with my father I would be about 10 years raised much to my mother's absolute horror I suppose you wanted to preserve a young son mothers do well in a single-seat biplane I was allowed to hold the stick but of course obviously I couldn't reach the rudder pedals so it was just a gentle experience if you like but he had pressed the right button my father had been a Royal Flying Corps pilot in World War one the Germans had a Society of World War one competence they decided to invite their opposition over to have a shindig during the Berlin Olympics in 1936 [Music] that was hella hit down now see it open now that old chatting him and they've the hope God have raised their right on [Music] the great event of course was the wonderful Jesse Owens here was a man who 100 meters 200 meters the long jump and the former 100-meter really four gold medals not exactly what Hitler with his Aryan ideals had wanted I've read many stories that said Hitler ignored him now this is quite untrue because I actually witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens and congratulate him 148 the achieve [Music] [Applause] [Music] Elvan so debt became famous in World War one the top-scoring pirate after whistles [Music] he had many lady friends cigar smoking champagne drinking sort of chap bigger-than-life he said now we're going to flying and I was in the front cockpit he was in the rear he took particular tension to strap me in very carefully I thought no let's just how nice of him you know but there was a purpose and as I found out you really threw that thing around he turned it inside out we came in to land Nunley approach he turned it onto his back I thought well you turn it over before but nothing happened he kept coming on and I thought really I think the silly old fools had a heart attack and I really thought it was going to be my demise but he turned it round and it literally fell onto the runway this is how good a pilot he was he slapped me on the back and said the German fighter pilots leaned housen bundle he said you'll make a good fighter pilot and he said now do two things for me learn to speak German and then learn to fly it was a pivotal point in my life German troops made a formal entry into the Demilitarized Zone on the left bank of the Rhine they are Hitler confirmed the reoccupation of the Rhine [Music] [Applause] I had achieved the two things that who dare to challenge me to do so I wrote him and he said yes I'll book you into a little gas house we'll show you a bit of Berlin I was in my teens politically naive I really was just having a wonderful experience it seemed a very vibrant country lots of uniforms to be seen around Hitler Youth seemed to offer slightly more than the Boy Scouts offered if you like to put it that way Nuremberg was a rallying point what's the biggest thing we do here I suppose it was like the coronation with knobs on the only thing that drove me to want to see it was curiosity people said oh it's a fabulous show you know you must go and see it so many people packed into one place all hugely enthusiastic I began to wonder how does this man attract all these people I thought there must be some strange charisma he's like the Pied Piper of Hamelin and they're all following him as he lands along all the triumphs of Hitler his annexation of Austria the crushing of Czechoslovakia it has been a year of crises and we can hardly ignore them but it has also been the year of the Lambeth war and we may be grateful to NAT dance phenomenon which has helped to preserve our sense of value for even gas masks so they RP have been unable to steal that undaunted [Music] a little group from the Foreign Office asked me if I was interested in joining the diplomatic corps and I said I was and they said right we will send you to Germany for six months in early September I decided to go to Munich for a weekend and drive up in my car on the 3rd of September at about 6:00 in the morning was a thunderous knock on my door 2 SS officers said I have to tell you you're under arrest because our two countries are at war now technically this was untrue because 11 o'clock was the time that I wasn't a strong position to argue [Music] the same are the chimed for armistice toes the signal for another war they took all clothes I have books etc and off we went I was in a little SS jail that wasn't at all ill-treated on the third day one the young SS lieutenant came to me said we're taking it down to the Swiss frontier when we arrived the lieutenant said to me you're free to go and you can take your car so I said oh you've taken my clothes my books my money why are you giving me my car and he said in German because we have no spares very Teutonic attitude but now one bond unites at all to wage war until victories won and never just surrender ourselves to servitude and shame whatever the cost and the agony maybe I was taken to burn and the ambassador said course I've been told to return you as soon as possible because you've been called up [Music] I was keen to get back at the Germans as a bit peaked uh but being locked up that was young raring to go suddenly on the noticeboard the winter thing saying the Navy have lost a lot of pilots there's a shortage and if you're interested moving over to the fridge I'll append your name to the board so I did that very thing it semester that she originally was banana boat operating in the Caribbean Churchill was his religion idea thought right cut everything off so that we can lay a flat flight deck on it to operate aircraft [Music] the wild cat as the Americans called it was an aircraft that had a bigger punch than the British aircraft of that time instead of point three or three guns it had point five guns far out in the gray Atlantic the big buck of all farmers range far and wide across the ocean sneaking up the convoy is approaching British shores the courier was probably the most heavily armed German aircraft in the sky it had machine guns firing at the side windows cannon two toilets on top and a complete Godzilla underneath although there was very heavily on realizing what I was up against I have studied this very carefully worked out how the guns could depress or elevate there was only one black spot which they couldn't reach and that was if he came in flat towards the pilots copy [Music] [Applause] when I opened fire could see the windscreen just disintegrating so the pilots must have been killed you're on grave danger with colliding with your target and you had to break away either up or down you get that exhilarating feeling that you've nailed him the u-boats lie in waiting like wolves they will stalk a convoy for days at a stretch fighting that time until the chance of wind and weather offers the fattest prize to their torpedoes we realized we are gonna be under attack so the captain of a desti sort will zigzag at full speed for the night learn your submarine let fly this caught the rudder we were in darkness but this time we'd barely stopped when the submarine surfaced but two hundred yards away on our port side it was an eerie sight as it popped out of the sea it was covered in phosphorescence it was almost as if it was a Christmas tree of lights on it all over the commander came up onto the conning tower we could see the gold braid on his hat we were that close he's just went over the tower surveying us with a student and watched each other somebody's never broke one the semen and he lept to a 20-millimeter Oerlikon gun and started firing submarine [Applause] I thought he'll irritate a u-boat captain which is what he did of course and the next thing was he's just fired of a bevy of - PETA zetas carrier reared up I have the twang of the horses holding the aircraft breaking the six act of just broke loose load on the deck and all these guys standing there and oh absolute chaos we were all swimming as fast as we could to get away from the vessel turn around she plunged down very rapidly tremendous booming as things imploded [Music] and what a hell of a lot of people in the water of course but this time [Music] another pirate call that and he said let's tie ourselves together I think we were 24 all together and at first we were all fine we talked to each other and everything but after but three quarters of an hour everybody stop talking and falling asleep [Music] these saps were falling forward because they're nothing to support their heads and were drowning life section leads I said the only thing we can do is cut them off from us otherwise we'll all go down together the whole 24 hours so let's continue right through it then the night cutting one or two away and letting them drift off it really was a very nasty business by the morning all the seamen had drowned there was only two of us left [Music] unknown to me the captain of the audacity said I had a facility for deck landing and the Admiralty should make use of it I got a telegram asking me to undertake a series of trials on various carriers [Music] hellcat comes in too quickly the pilot seems none the worse this landing is particularly bad with this machine coming in one would think all is well ded landing one has to accept is quite a hazardous business the fire Brown depends on the stuntman accidents well 10 a penny here you see another aircraft if it doesn't have an accident it'll be a very unusual affair no I only had one crash caused by a hook not lowering and the bats will not having seen it I picture by picture analysis of the slow-motion film proved very useful [Music] the story of the d.h 98 or mosquito is one of brilliant success at the moment the fastest aircraft in operation in the work the mosquito is a superb I was asked to put it a born aircraft carrier it was twice as heavy as any aircraft endeavour we landed on a carrier was twice as big the top entry speed that we could land was 86 miles an hour the stalling speed of the mosquito is 110 hence everybody cell and portable respect judges the mosquito doing crash barrier tests in a Thomas triumph by all appearances wouldn't constructed airplanes will just seem to be unsuitable for this treatment but when you're young and confident and you say brash things [Music] mr. Havilland Mosquito was the first to engine machine to land on an aircraft carrier a pilot moath Lieutenant Commander am brown this really changed my life because the director of the REE said to me lately frankly I didn't think I'd ever see you again and I was promoted and became the chief naval test pilot of Umbra [Music] v1 the flying bomb the robot bomb the buzz bomb you're a passenger on a bus and this is the end of your last trip you're the man on the street and you do what you can you're an airman on leave and this is your welcome mat [Music] the problem was attacking the v1 is it came over as a steady speed of 400 miles now even if you caught up with it and fired the debris from it was likely to damage your own air between sorties the pilots got together to discuss the best methods of attack we devised a method of flying alongside and putting your wing under the v1 swing then if you raise your when you tilt that v1 over the other direction and then a way to go the best plane I would say the tempest five I've had the speed to overtake it was a pretty rugged r22 and it had different soul to do the tipping [Music] I was doing a series of trials and engine block and propeller once absolutely solid I saw the engine was on fire outside I didn't realize I was burning inside until my feet cooked I realized that I had to get out failing that is not as easy as many people think and when I stood up in the cockpit the goodbye legs over the side iris pinned back but here slips him a thing so then what I did was get one leg over the side one leg on the seat Lynden get hold of the stick pull it hard over towards me and that catapulted me out [Music] it'll hit much time to worry about the finer points of it the thing is you get out and move on in testifying we had a high casualty rate year after year 25 percent the pilots involved in high-speed flight were lost this was full of very great cause to keep our aircraft ahead of the enemy it was them today it might be me tomorrow one just had to shrug it off and say wars on huge casualties they are just part of the cost [Music] this is your victory victory of the cold of freedom [Applause] the director of the REE formed a mission to go to Germany after the capitulation and find out more about their technology I was more than impressed I was shocked with what we found because they were so far ahead [Music] this is the miche's mid 262 the world's first operational jet fighter it was more than a hundred miles an hour faster than the best piston engine fighter this was a lightning-fast airplane it looks in body form like a shock sweat back wings and the underslung images it really looks pow pow [Music] when I got there me-262 in there it was so fast it was virtually untouchable [Music] had four thirteen millimeter cannon which is a huge punch batteries of rockets [Music] I saw American military aircraft being attacked by enemy 260 [Music] one minute there was this beautiful looking [ __ ] in the sky a minute later confetti I've learned almost all the world war two aircraft and I Ranka is the most formidable aircraft of World War two [Music] amid the ruins the days people wander here and there [Music] better than shell swept not much remains [Music] one of the first war criminals is captured Herman Goering [Music] [Music] Goering was Hitler's right-hand man head of the Luftwaffe I was quite taken aback at how slimmed down from the all the pictures I'd ever seen him as a rather porky gentleman the Americans had wind him off drugs they stripped him of all insignia he had been interrogated day in there but the invigilator officer said to him now you're going to be interrogated by a pirate and literally he brightened up instantly the first question I asked him was port in Europe engine was the outcome of the Battle of Britain and he said it was a dog he said if you look at the analysis of the battle you will find in the last week for the first time the German casualties were lower than the British now this is perfectly true if you look at the records and he said this showed a turning point have you arrived at the jaws of the Nazi whale were set to swallow Jonah but he said unfortunately we couldn't continue because Hitler ordered all fighter units back for the invasion of Russia I've told many people listen nobody said oh no you got that wrong many of them assume like God when we're lucky at the end he came over and stuck his hand out to shake hands now I couldn't under any circumstances shake hands so I thought the hell do I do now and very quickly I suddenly said to him Houston bundle the old fighter pilots greeting he half smiled and just dropped his hand broken neck and broken legs was the Greek II go in there and do your stuff maybe that's full you get but as long you survive you'll just answer my questions we'll save a great deal of time concentration camps was one of the things you found immediately necessary upon coming to power is it not having been to Belsen I realized that Goering had a huge responsibility for the concentration camps your answer is yes I think [Music] when we arrived at the gates we could see the soldiers waiting for us the Germans had discovered there were 20,000 cases of typhus in Belsen they thought if the guards the inmates escaped we'll have a plague which could be worse than the war [Music] I spoke to one or two but they were like zombies when you stopped them they would stop they wouldn't look at you they would just look at the ground not reply at all when you finished they would move aside and move on they were literally dying zombies [Music] I could see huts these had originally been built to accommodate 60 inmates when we got there there were about 250 in each shot [Music] these people were theoretically still alive but I say alive brackets [Music] my experience of the Germans before the war was a very friendly one I admired them for their disciplined way of life they were hard workers but my attitude totally changed when I witness what I did in Bilson because I thought if these people are capable of this there are just an evil race [Music] I began to query them did they know about these concentration camps and how did he justify them their excuse was they had been offered something to put their country back to well had previously been by Hitler and they would have forward anybody that offered them this [Music] few months after war ended trials of the tailless th 108 began with Jeffrey de Havilland's flight at Woodbridge to achieve supersonic flight was the holy grail of aviation in my time at the end of the wall the de havilland team swept the wings back 45 degrees up their jet engine to about three and a half thousand pounds thrust he decided to prepare for an attempt on the world speed record the chief test pilot was Jeffrey de Havilland the son of the founder of the company I knew Jeffrey very well saw a lot of Jeffrey to me Jeffrey was more of the Hollywood type of test pilot the way he was going to work up what it was to start with high speed runs at 10,000 feet come down thousand feet at a time keep full throttle on each one and he was running a seven when suddenly their craft disintegrated [Music] their crafts debris and Jeffrey's body fell on Egypt Bay near the estuary of the Thames Jeffrey was still in his parachute but it had never been attempted to be opened so right away well there was the first mystery secondly it was found that Jeffrey had a broken neck the cause of the disintegration was to be investigated and this was given to farmer I started to follow the same pattern of flight that year you got [Music] I've got down to 4,000 feet suddenly the aircraft went into a violent oscillation it did three cycles of second and in each cycle IRA subjected to plus 4G and - sweetie the medics say that a pilot will stand this for 10 seconds before going unconscious the one thought was survival how do I get this sorted I was beginning to lose consciousness so what I did was hold the throttle hold the stick and this was pure instinct just call booth back gently together as suddenly as it happened after seven seconds stopped [Music] I was pretty pleased about it I can tell you I could see clearly that Jeffrey lose his head and probably violently struck the canopy broken his neck and um that was it when you take on a job that's part of it as a dare part of it is a professional a challenge somebody done an analysis of my flying and they serve had 13 that might have finished up fatal but I don't know yes I think the two things have contributed to my survival I was a stickler for preparation before the flight there was a type of pilot who was a bit gung-ho the great shame would be kick the tires light the fires and the last one officer [ __ ] now if you have that attitude and test flying you are not going to the hospital and secondly fact I am small helped my survival for example I had a crash in a vampire if I had been six feet I'd have lost my legs I survived purely because I was small and I got curl I called myself up in the cockpit the heaven and we're developing a jet fighter the vampire and there was a strong desire to operate jet aircraft from carriers we knew the Americans were trying to be the first to land the jet on an aircraft carrier and it was nothing but a friendly rivalry the sea was so rough Keller was moving enough to make life difficult certainly for the first landing so the signal had been sent out returned to base but I didn't get that so I screamed overhead and that was the first thing you ever said [Music] another page of history was written on December the 3rd 1945 when L said five five one landed on and took off from HMS ocean the first jet aircraft ever to operate from a ship at sea then the planet leftenant commander brown Winkle to his friends the event is the cause of interest some very considerable interest [Music] and it is coming up from below still surrounded and commanding attention the pilot can be seen in the foreground without where does the urge come from feelings believing running out the full car before taking off spectators are little more distant behind something somewhere there was no trouble with a free takeoff a new era had started in the aircraft had come to stay [Music] [Music] well the mid-sixties eyes moving up the seniority ladder it was likely that I did get nasty being a good Scott I was praying that I'll get Lhasa by the training ground for nuclear bombers [Music] when I first went to the Fleet Air Arm the first aircraft I flew was then biplane gladiator you finish up and the end of my career The Buccaneer there was different from that day earlier as chalk from season war had pushed progress along so fast at a huge cost of course in money and in lives when you compare these two earrings with the biplane and the Buccaneer you are talking about destructive loads of being delivered with accuracy that was unbelievable those early days science fiction almost [Music] at first when I had to retire from flying I think it was a feeling similar to a drug addict gives when he no longer can get his drugs withdrawal symptoms were fierce for about a year and then I came to terms with the after a year but it wasn't easy [Music] one thing I learned about myself was I was prepared to give up anything to stay in Tesla for six years of Umbra I virtually never had a days leave that is a terrible imposition on your family so the law prices to be paid [Music] it did become an obsession with me it was something I felt I had to do otherwise I was my soul if you like to put it that we would never be at peace [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 127,460

Rating: 4.8836365 out of 5

Keywords: documentary history, WW2, Eric Brown, aviation, history documentary, records, BBC documentary, Full Documentary, Captain, History, aircraft, Channel 4 documentary, Documentaries, TV Shows - Topic, Flying, Documentary, 2017 documentary, hero, world war 2, Full length Documentaries, stories, Documentary Movies - Topic, fighting, memories, real

Id: 8sK0mZnBx94

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2018